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Documentary Special: Experimenting with steroids

SIMON SANTOW: Hello, I'm Simon Santow and this is a Radio Current Affairs documentary.

This is a story of how more and more young men are becoming obsessed with the size of their muscles. So much so, they're increasingly injecting performance enhancing drugs to get that vital edge.

Some use anabolic steroids, which are now being seized in record amounts, while others use similar but synthetic pro-hormones that are legally available online.

Whatever the method, some blame the trend on the mass media's obsession with images of perfect male bodies.

Worryingly medical professionals are warning of a health time bomb as more young men develop what's known as anorexia in reverse - the muscle obsession.

Tom Nightingale reports.

(Sounds from within a gym)

TOM NIGHTINGALE: In gyms across the country young men work out and build muscle.

KURT: Biceps, triceps one day and then putts and trutts (phonetic) one day, shoulders and chest another and then I've got legs on a fourth day.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Law student Kurt is one of them. Kurt says he has never tried steroids but he's aware of just how easy and tempting it is to do so.

KURT: Yeah a friend of mine was for a while and he asked me if I wanted to but I wasn't really interested. I'm a bit worried about the health side-effects really to be honest.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: This is a story of how more and more young men want to look big and can easily access illegal drugs that let them do so.

This man wants to be called Luke but it's not his real name. He used steroids for about a decade as a body builder.

LUKE: I was a pretty nerdy kid at school. I was the fattest kid at school, I was teased a lot, but I was also very strong, I was naturally strong. So when I took steroids, far out, all of a sudden my body was harder, I could train harder, I could train longer. Yeah, I lost a lot of weight.

I certainly looked a lot better so that was a very positive side effect and I think a lot people see that side effect and look at that as the primary goal but for me it certainly wasn't but I know for a lot of people that is the primary goal.

STUART MURRAY: I've certainly seen a trend towards moving away from functional sporting performance more towards aesthetic appearance. So the young people I work with are taking steroids primarily to look bigger or look more ripped rather than improve their performance at any sport, per se.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Luke still goes to the gym, and says he's been amazed by the change in steroid use, especially in the past three years.

LUKE: I've seen a huge increase in steroid use, especially by younger people. Anywhere from 18 to 35 is huge at the moment. And they'll do it at any cost, they don't care what it costs, they just want it.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Professor Gordian Fulde, from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital says steroid use is becoming more obvious in the emergency department he manages.

GORDIAN FULDE: We can get a patient who might have been drinking and been up somebody's nose and this person is so beaten up, and so you can see this is just not normal forces, right. And likely as not, a little while later, we'll have a security guard come into the department with broken knuckles or something. And when you see this person, they're just a ball of muscle, and we find out that yes, that person has been working out taking 'roids as well.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Two years ago Dr Murray finished a PhD on an illness called muscle dysmorphia. It's so new that there isn't consensus about whether it is an eating or an anxiety disorder. It's also known as anorexia in reverse.

STUART MURRAY: A typical case would be usually a highly muscular male who is 100 per cent adamant that they're not muscular enough. He would train probably to every day. He would train if he was injured and I had a patient once who broke his wrist and carried on bench pressing because the pain of, the pain and anxiety of losing muscle was greater than the pain of training with a broken wrist.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Dr Murray says he's treated one man who missed his best friend's wedding because he didn't want to eat the wedding cake and risk putting fat on. He says other patients set alarms twice a night to drink a protein shake that would help them build muscle.

STUART MURRAY: There'd be probably a level of anxiety about showing one's body or alternatively there'd be high levels of reassurance seek and so we guys asking, "Do you think my arms look big?" repeatedly because they were worried about their arms getting smaller.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Luke knows what it's like to be well built but not satisfied.

LUKE: You never think you're big enough, you never think you're good enough so you keep striving and striving and striving. Of course, you never get there because you know your arms aren't big enough or your shoulders are bigger than your arms so you got to work on your arms or it just, it never stops.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: So it sounds addictive?

LUKE: Very, very addictive. People look at you and you look fantastic but on the inside you're a very, very sick individual.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Dr Stuart Murray says the boys and men who have muscle dysmorphia are highly unlikely to seek help. He says even once they recover, they're usually too ashamed to even admit having had it in the past.

STUART MURRAY: They view the illness positively so they think if they don't have this strong drive for muscularity, then they are going to lose size. Now the majority of guys don't know they have a illness and they'll reject that fairly vehemently but even the ones I've worked work with who do know they have this illness are frightened to let go of it because they're worried they'll become skinny.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Tee is a man who lives in Sydney and knows exactly how that it feels to be muscly and not satisfied. He spoke to the ABC at Bondi Beach one afternoon. He works in a stressful sales job and says working out was his preferred escape from it.

TEE: When you're in the gym and you're really pushing hard, the endorphins run through the body, your whole body start to changes and forget about the work stuff and everything else. And that escape for an hour or so, I find personally it rejuvenates you for the next day until you get back there again.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: But he says he became too attached to the workouts, and it became destructive.

TEE: It was mostly just about the aesthetic and there was no joy in it. The joys were short-lived when you get a few compliments, and one day I just thought, you know, this consumes my whole life. It controls me. I'm losing control of it.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: He says anabolic steroids are an easy and understandable choice for someone who wants to be as big as they can be.

TEE: Without a doubt you are stronger and that feeds the ego more than anything else. I suppose it is like recreational drugs where people just chase that high, and in this case they just chase the performance and aesthetical change.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: And obviously they know about the side effects but-

TEE: Well, they do. People know the side effects about drinking and smoking too. Does it bother them? No.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Tee says he's now over the pathological desire to build muscle and now exercises for fun. He blames the atmosphere in gyms for exaggerating the instinctive competitiveness of some men.

TEE: Very few understand this area. There's a lot of ego in the gym, there's a lot of people doing it for aesthetics in your typical mainstream health club.

Steroid use is difficult to estimate because many users are reluctant to admit it but on one measure, the number of packages of performance enhancing drugs Customs officers seize in imported mail has tripled in the past three years. Some of that is due to a change in measuring methodology but it is also evidence of increasing steroid use.

LUKE: You know, I even had my brother's wife say to me, "Oh I wouldn't get anything off him because he's just full of steroids", and then you sort of gotta go, "No I'm not," whereas in your heart you know you are. But on the other side of things you feel hurt because you train very, very hard.

And there's a lot of guys out there that take stuff and they won't even, if they can't get any steroids they just won't train, you know, and that's pretty sad. It is just the way it is.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: When he was using steroids, Luke says he wouldn't admit it to his closest family or friends. He says he was only honest with other users.

LUKE: People store it at a mate's house, hide it in a roof. It's got to be kept in a dark place so, you know, there is nothing like the roof. I mean it's, you know, hiding it, keeping it in the car, keeping it on them.

When your girlfriends and parents or wives or mates see you every day, they don't really notice any change, the change is as great. Sure if they look back at photos they go, "Wow look at you. This is you at your birthday and now look at you now. Like, what happened? I don't look like that". So, "I don't know, maybe I'm just going through a growth spurt," and then all the excuses come out.

You know, I had a couple of mates who I trained with and they sort of said, "Oh, what have I got to do to look like you?" and you know, then you can divulge stuff and then it becomes your little club so to speak, yeah. It's just one of the bad things I think when you start bringing your mates involved in your own bad habits.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: The psychologist Dr Stuart Murray says some parents mistakenly think an addiction to looking bigger is a good thing.

STUART MURRAY: So lots of parents I meet with will say, "Well I'd rather my kid go the gym three times a day than be out on the corner or in drugs or anything like that".

What I often say to that is this illness is characterised by high levels of suicide, really, really poor impaired quality of life and this is an affliction. This is not a hobby, this is not a lifestyle choice, it is an illness.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Professor Gordian Fulde, from Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital lectures high school students about the dangers of drugs. He says teenagers as young as 13 are using anabolic steroids and he says it is more prevalent at 15 or 16.

GORDIAN FULDE: The sports teachers all know what's going on. I know that's why I like the parents. I sometimes open up. I mean people know about the ecstasy and they know about the binge drinking, but a lot of them really were clueless about the fact that their sons quite possible were taking steroids.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Steroids are illegal in Australia, unless they're being used for medical reasons. But they're legal in many places overseas.

There's a niche tourism scene in Thailand where Australian men buy and use the drugs legally for a cycle. It's cheaper and less hassle than doing so in Australia.

But for those who do stay in the country, steroids are dealt in some gyms and by some personal trainers.

But acting chief superintendent Arthur Katsogiannis of New South Wales Police says the eventual source is usually organised crime gangs.

ARTHUR KATSOGIANNIS: There are elements within those criminal syndicates that are distributing anabolic steroids. Again it's only an emerging trend we've identified, what the true extent of it is we're yet to establish because there is not enough data or research done on it, but it is something that we're aware of. We are monitoring it.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: The former steroid user Luke says it's easy for anyone to acquire the drugs and he says the people dealing them are preying on those they sell to.

(to Luke) Generally speaking there is quite a few different ways that steroids can be obtained, isn't there?

LUKE: There's thousands of different ways and every time, every one they catch, there is five more different ways waiting behind it. So the police are pretty much - steroids, they're not going to go and raid a house full of steroids because you know, it's just steroids. They're not life threatening as such whereas you're looking at, pretty sure if they raided a house full of ecstasy and stuff they're going to find some steroids there.

I know people who have been dealing steroids for 20 years and never, ever had a problem, never ever had a problem because they've never gone into that other side of things. So, and you know, they're dealing to cops, they're dealing to lots and lots of different people.

In one case two years ago in Western Sydney, he says an organised crime squad had made a million dollars in 12 months in steroid sale profits.

ARTHUR KATSOGIANNIS: It's difficult to say what sort of organisation and profit is that, but when you're talking about steroids alone, that's a lot of steroids and that's a lot of income coming in, and these people were just distributing from what our investigation uncovered. As I said, outlaw motorcycle gang members and members of the fitness industry and gymnasiums.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: The ABC can reveal police in New South Wales want the penalties for trafficking steroids to be increased.

Detective acting chief superintendent Arthur Katsogiannis.

ARTHUR KATSOGIANNIS: It is a prescribed restricted substance, not a prohibited drugs. Maximum sentence for the use and supply of steroids is a maximum of two years. So there is a high profit margin to be made with low risk, low penalty.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Not every user buys steroids from a personal trainer or someone at the gym. Some have a complicit doctor who knowingly writes a dodgy prescription, and some pharmacy burglaries involve steroid thefts.

But sometimes steroid users go to extraordinary lengths to fool doctors or pharmacists.

The ABC has learnt that earlier this year a man in suburban Melbourne obtained enough steroids for more than 800 injections during a three month scam involving more than 30 pharmacies. Just three of the pharmacists he tried were suspicious and refused to give him the steroids.

The same man obtained prescriptions for other anabolic steroids from a GP by pretending to be a specialist doctor. And he acquired enough testosterone to treat 87,000 sheep by convincing a vet he was a sheep farmer.

The man has since been jailed.

But for all the dodgy prescriptions, trips to Thailand, and shady deals with personal trainers and gym buddies, the main way young men buy steroids is on the internet.

And because it's anonymous, the internet chat forums allow steroid users to be honest. They talk in general terms about how to get them and specifically about how to use them and how others don't understand their drive to get bigger and fitter.

They are also frustrated that many journalists sensationalise the health side-effects of steroid use. The side-effects are sometimes exaggerated and vary according to the dose and type of steroid.

The former long term steroid user known as Luke says the internet is also the main mechanism to buy synthetic steroids, known as pro-hormones. These have similar effects but different chemical structures so they're legal.

LUKE: You can buy them online and when that one is banned, they just change one of the elements so it's not the same and bang, away it comes again. So you know, you can buy this one, this is the new improved. Why is it new and improved, because the other lot got banned so we've just changed it a little bit so it comes through.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Paul Dillon from Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia regularly visits schools. He says young men are more likely to buy powdered supplements for the same effects.

PAUL DILLON: And the concerns that they hear, because particularly online if you are purchasing them from another country, they often will say cannot send these to Australia because of the laws and there have been young men who have sort of bulk-ordered to prepare for when the law changes.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: He says students aren't being warned about anabolic steroids or powdered supplements but that the risks also shouldn't be overstated.

PAUL DILLON: If we are going to talk about risks, we are going to put warnings out about these, about these products then we have to make absolutely sure that risks and warnings are accurate and that we're not crying wolf.

Young people don't believe very much of what we say in this area anyway and in this area where the evidence is not absolute we do have to be very careful, but that said, I think it is important for adolescents whose bodies are changing to make it clear that what we do know about using performance and image enhancing drugs is that while the body is developing, it is not a good idea to mess around with it.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: So is that message being delivered at the moment or not?

PAUL DILLON: I don't think it is at all.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Whether it's anabolic steroids or synthetic pro-hormones, there are plenty of theories and little research into why more young men want to look so muscly.

The Butterfly Foundation has been trying to address body image issues among young women for decades.

CHRISTINE MORGAN: We see young boys, boys as young as seven and eight years old being admitted into hospital for eating disorders and the precursor to an eating disorder is a very negative body image.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: The chief executive, Christine Morgan, says the muscle issues of some young men are a new phenomenon.

CHRISTINE MORGAN: Body image is so commonly seen as being something that affects women and girls but it really is there for the boys. And as I say for girls we have what we call the thin ideal, which is society has said that is how we should look, artificially thin. For boys it is very much the buff, cut, lean look. It is the six pack.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: Tee says he thinks more and more people will go through the same addiction to working out that he's been through.

TEE: Society becomes a big factor in pushing and raising the bar higher than what it should be for general health purposes. So it becomes something where it is not, it is completely not about health and wellness anymore, it is all about higher expectations.

TOM NIGHTINGALE: The former long-term steroid user Luke agrees. But although he says something needs to change, he has no idea what or how to do it.

LUKE: You've only got to look to a music festival. You know, 1,000 guys walking around with their shirts off and people are quite happy to advertise the fact that look at me, I'm looking fantastic and, you know, which leads to violent behaviour. I mean you can't say violence hasn't increased in the last three years and, you know, it is pretty scary stuff.

People are taking performance enhancing drugs not for performance enhancing anymore but for body image. I mean I just can't see the point but it's expensive. The drug dealers are making money, heaps and heaps of money out of it and yeah, it's dangerous.

It's not just dangerous to their bodies because they're young, a lot of these guys are still young and still growing, they are also taking lots of steroids, drinking lots of alcohol and taking lots of recreational drugs, so you know it's just a time bomb.

I don't know what they're going to do about it, but I don't think you're going to stop people doing it, but I just, I don't know whether education is a way but it's getting worse. Steroid use is getting worse.

I mean, I was in the gym yesterday and I was looking at these young guys going what the hell is going on here? I know of kids that have said, "Here take," you know, people have said, "Here take this, inject it into your arm or your bum three times a week for six weeks". They don't even know what it is. It could be anything.

I don't know what to do. It is certainly different to when I was a lot younger but I don't think it is going to change. I mean, if someone said to me even today, "Here's um, you know, 50mls of testosterone, you can have it". It's not going to sit on the shelf. I'll use it.

SIMON SANTOW: Tom Nightingale reporting. And you've been listening to a Radio Current Affairs documentary.